Bank customers are increasingly using mobile banking services (e.g., M-Banking, mbanking, and SMS Banking) to perform balance checks, account transactions, and payments via a mobile device such as a mobile phone. For example, according to one industry survey, banks that offer mobile financial services may increase the number of new customer acquisitions by as much as sixty percent. The current pace of mobile adoption appears to be exceeding that of past innovations, including ATMs, debit cards, and online banking. About a third of consumers are currently using, or at least considering using, mobile financial services in the next year, and some projections forecast that mobile financial service adoption will exceed the use of on-line banking by 2015.
Mobile banking is currently most often performed via short message service (SMS) or the mobile Internet but also may use special programs called clients downloaded to the mobile device. New types of mobile devices are being and will continue to be introduced in the future. For example, as smartphone adoption continues to rise and more sites and apps accommodate them, our culture is headed for a very mobile world at a very fast pace. However, content distribution to mobile devices is currently limited, difficult, and done sporadically or not at all. It is thus important that mobile banking supports the ubiquity of mobile devices.